The Right To Die in California

Column originally published March 29, 2007

Terminally ill should decide when it's time

By Kelvin Wade

It's time that California follows Oregon's lead once again. California should approve physician-assisted suicide. On Tuesday, AB 374, which is patterned on Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee by a 7-3 vote. Assembly Speaker Fabio Nunez, D-LA, is one of the co-sponsors making this bill likely to pass the Assembly.

While the law would require that two independent doctors agree on the diagnosis and a six months left-to-live prognosis, a doctor would merely prescribe the lethal medication, not help administer it.

There are safeguards built into the law that provide counseling if necessary and require the request to be made once in writing and twice orally.

Of course, the California Medical Association opposes the law. Their canon is to first do no harm. But doctors prescribe harmful levels of painkillers at the end of life now and see no contradiction. And once again, it is the patient who must ingest the lethal dose. The doctors do not administer it.

What about being responsible to patients' needs? A Field Poll last year showed 70 percent of California support such a law. At least 64 percent have supported such a law since 1979. Isn't it time?

Opponents say there will be an economic incentive for family members of the terminally ill to pressure them to end their lives. Still others say it's a slippery slope that could lead to euthanizing people for a variety of physical and mental frailties.

But we don't have to fear horror stories or speculate. All we have to do is look north to see what Oregon's experience has been. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was approved in 1994 and affirmed three years later in a second vote. It's been challenged in the courts and upheld by the US Supreme Court.

So have thousands of people rushed to the state to die? Are the terminally ill turned into Soylent Green? Have they slipped down that slope to snuffing out granny to get their hands on her estate? Have the mentally challenged, the depressed, the insane been snuffed out in order to build some Master Race?

Not quite.

From 1998 to 2004, a little more than 200 people have taken lethal doses, according to Oregon health authorities.

In this country, we expect the terminally ill to go down fighting. We applaud it. And a lot of that applause is spurred by a fear of death. Many can't understand why someone facing certain death, a painful, slow, undignified death would want to leave this world on their own terms. Even Oregon proves that most terminally ill people don't choose to end their lives. However, a small percentage do.

Some will oppose the law on religious and/or moral grounds. While we should respect those opinions, this once again comes down to a matter of choice.

You know what I think is immoral? I imagine a terminally-ill person robbed of their vitality, robbed of the control over their mobility or bodily functions, wracked with pain with only the certain knowledge that things are going to get worse for them. With so much control taken from them, it's immoral to rob them of the choice to control their fate.

Californians should have the choice.